The Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to strengthen its administrative due process and enforcement of the new electoral laws, ahead of 2023 general elections.
The Director of the School, Dr Sam Amadi, said this in his remarks at July Policy Roundtable on the Nigeria 2023 general elections in Abuja on Thursday.
Amadi said that there had been significant improvement in the design and implementation of the electoral process in Nigeria, that gave greater assurance of credible, free, and fair elections.
He said that the reform of the legal regime of election management and the mainstreaming of technology in the architecture of election management had engendered greater transparency in the electoral process.
“What remains underdeveloped is the decision-making process of the electoral management body. Although the new electoral law has improved the efficacy of the regulatory powers of the commission, there is poor procedural safeguard in the management of elections.
“The absence of entrenched due process in the regulation of elections in Nigeria is the biggest challenge to credible, free, and fair elections in 2023.
“Therefore, ensuring regulatory due process in INEC is the most critical support to credible, free, and fair elections in 2023,” Amadi said.
He said that INEC had deepened the use of technology including the use of Biometric Voter Identification system (BIVAS) to accredit voters and the electronic transmission of results, which strengthen faith in the electoral process.
The school director said that with the positive changes to the electoral process introduced by the new electoral law, the most potent danger to free and fair elections in 2023 was the capacity of INEC to make fair and just decisions.
Amadi said that the history of INEC’s administrative lapses and periodic biases and misjudgments did not give confidence that INEC could become a fair and effective regulator of credible elections, except it was supported with critical regulatory resources.
He cited a situation where INEC decided to extend the deadline for parties to conduct their primaries on the eve of the primaries of one of the parties and gave the ruling party an advantage of extra weeks to plan its convention.