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The Independent National Electoral Commission, the body charged with the conduct and management of elections in Nigeria, has been in the news of late. There is a bill currently making its way through Parliament aimed at revamping its working structure, supposedly to make it more responsive and compliant. The main bone of contention in the proposed legislation is the conflicting desires of lawmakers to either include or obviate the need for on-the-spot electronic transmission of results.
Rest assured, the APC would have been parroting similar righteous lines if it was the party in opposition. However, this week’s column is not even about the raw sentiments being expressed both inside and outside Parliament, compelling though they may be. Our focus, instead, is on the ‘independent’ status of INEC as a matter of principle. After all, it is the anchor around which everything else hinges.
As an electoral umpire, INEC must not only be independent, it must also be seen to be independent. However, to the public at large, the organisation is neither independent, nor seen to be one.
If the football analogy helps fuel your rage on this topic, then, it should. The idea of having a general election of a country coordinated from the centre by a government-appointed agency is, of itself, profoundly anti-democratic. This is precisely why no equivalent of a national election commission exists in advanced democracies of the West. The more power you allocate to a body at the centre, the more the risk of abuse. Election administration is a devolved matter in Western democracies.
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