INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega
| credits: File copy
The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, explains the challenges it faced in the July 14 governorship election in Edo State and plans for the October 20 poll in Ondo State, Mr. Kayode Idowu, Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, spoke to LEKE BAIYEWU on this in Lagos
Some irregularities were recorded in the recent governorship election in Edo State. What are the challenges faced by the INEC in the process?
The challenges with elections are well known to the public by now. We conducted the elections and it was not without hitches. But like they say, all that starts well ends well.
As regards Edo State, the challenges crept up even before the election with the kind of acrimonious environment that existed; the allegations and counter-allegations by political players; and the efforts the commission had to make to build the confidence to take all the parties to the election. It was a big task.
Also on the Election Day, there were challenges but they were put behind; the election came out well at the end of the day.
There were problems of late arrival of materials at the polling units and the irregularities in the voter register, what caused these?
Everybody talks about the delay in the arrival of materials in one local government. People magnify the delay in one area and they forget that it was an isolated incident. I am not justifying it but, for instance, if you have 18 local governments and the materials get to 17 local governments on time, please give some consideration.
Where there were delays, there had been all manner of allegations, insinuations and accusations about conspiracy theories about why the materials were late. Whereas, the truth of the matter is that there were last minute administrative and logistical challenges that accounted for it. But the good thing is that INEC has a policy that says when a poll is supposed to open by 8am, if for whatever reason the poll does not open until 10am, automatically, you extend the accreditation time by two hours and the election is slightly extended. You extend by the equal number of hours that you lost earlier on. So, nobody was short-changed.
What were the pre-election challenges?
For instance, the acrimonious environment; there were allegations and counter-allegations. You must be aware that, for the first time, the INEC had three stakeholders meeting at the national level, excluding the many meetings at the state level. Even the stakeholders meeting that was constituted by the presidency and many others were to build confidence and to ease tension.
In Edo State, INEC was not able to continue with the Continuous Voter Registration simply because the actors would not allow it. The norm that the commission had established was that before the election, we conduct the CVR because it gives the opportunity for two things- you are able to enlist those who attained age 18 since the last registration and it gives the opportunity to clean up the register so that we will have a near perfect register. We were unable to do that in Edo because the actors would not allow it. These were the challenges.
How will the commission address these electoral problems such that they will not reoccur in the forthcoming Ondo State governorship election?
Hopefully, the CVR would be done in Ondo. When you are able to do that, you have substantially improved on the voter register and that helps.
Some administrative challenges are unforeseen but the good thing is that what happened there (in Edo State) and those challenges have become lessons for the commission. You will notice that, incrementally, the commission has improved on the processes. For instance, since the 2011 elections, the elections have been better. By all means, the Ondo election will be better than that of Edo because those lessons that were learnt in Edo can now be factored in to prevent reoccurrence in Ondo.
There were mixed feelings about deployment of the military in the Edo election, would the INEC recommend that the deployment be repeated in Ondo?
In the case of Edo State, I do not know who had the mixed feelings. Ask all parties that participated in the process, they actually endorsed or requested that the military be involved.
You will observe that when the military is deployed, what actually happens is not that the military are going to man the polling units but they are positioned in such a way that if occasion calls for it, they are on the alert to be rapidly deployed. If the occasion does not call for it, you will not see them even though they are on the standby.
It is not that they are coming to take over the policing of elections. The police are the leading agency in election security services. All other agencies have some marginal roles to play, while some have potential roles; like the military, it is a direct role that they have. They are only there that if something happens and those that are there cannot handle it. You cannot allow such situation to go on; somebody has to come in to quell it. You cannot wait until the fire is burning before you wake the fireman up. The fireman has to be on the standby and that is the idea.
