The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC says the 2023 general election will be the most transparent and peaceful in Nigeria.
Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, Chairman of the Commission, stated this in Abuja at the launch of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue’s paper titled “Post-Election Assessment of Conflict Management Mechanisms in Nigeria, 2019 and Beyond.”
Mr. Chukwuemeka Ugboaja, Deputy Director, Voter Education and Publicity, represented him at the ceremony. Professor Yakub stated that the commission has implemented strategic policies to ensure openness, citing perceived lack of transparency as one of the causes of violence during elections.
According to him, “the introduction of technologies in the election result management is a huge recipe to reducing conflict in the election.”
“The use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS, and the INEC Result Viewing Portal is a clear testimony to this. With the technological innovations, the commission has been very transparent and has eliminated the rigging of elections in Nigeria”, he explained.
Professor Yakubu also mentioned that the introduction of an inter-agency consultative committee on election security has also helped to manage the transparency of security agencies during elections.
Delivering the keynote address at the launch of the report, a member of the Board of, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue & Former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for West Africa and the Sahel, Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas examined some of the key points of the report and asked Nigerians to interrogate them.
Concerning fake news, Ibn Chambas said “fake news is powerful and it has many advocates, particularly on social media where it often originates before permeating into all other communication networks. It would therefore appear that managing fake news and other ills spread through social media would be an enormous leap in the management of electoral conflict.”
He said the 93.5 million registered voters in Nigeria exceeds the total populations of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Poland and Belarus – put together, thereby requiring huge logistics, a task he said INEC has positioned itself to overcome.
The study, conducted by Professor Freedom Onuoha and Dr Gbemisola Animasaun for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in partnership with the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Governments of Canada and Norway, was aimed at ascertaining whether prevailing conflicts had a bearing on elections and their outcomes or not, among other objectives.
The publication covered Adamawa, Benue, Imo, Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, Rivers and Lagos states.
Regional Director, Africa, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Babatunde Afolabi, described the 2023 general elections as a watershed moment in Nigeria’s history, noting that expectations were high in terms of the quality and transparency expected of a now consolidating democracy.
According to him, with the increased role and the difficulty of monitoring social media conduct, and hateful and inflammatory speeches, electoral management has become even more tasking for INEC and its partners responsible for ensuring the conduct of free and fair elections.
He urged relevant stakeholders such as the INEC, security agencies, and political parties. The CSOs tasked with elections monitoring, election observers, as well as the interested public, to read and reflect upon the findings contained in the study.
