OPINION: 9 Ways INEC Improved Elections In Nigeria

In praise of INEC Naij.com Poltical Analyst Adedayo Ademuwagun writes; 9 ways Jega and his team improved elections in Nigeria.


Attahiru Jega and his team came on board in June 2010 at a time when election management was extremely messed up. His predecessor Maurice Iwu had organised one of the worst elections in Nigerian history in 2007. The elections held that year were simply appalling.
Voter turnout was dismal. Rigging was blatant. Logistics were awful, and going to a polling booth was like going to a riot scene. People had given up on elections. Put this way, Jega inherited a crappy INEC.
The new INEC board brought in some fresh ideas and tried to fix the system before the 2011 elections, and they performed remarkably. The elections they’ve since organised are generally believed to be the best since the return to democracy in 1999.
INEC still needs fixing because they’re obviously struggling right now to prepare for the coming elections. However, the current leadership deserves some credit for the improvement they’ve brought into the system. Elections have clearly improved in the last five years. These are 10 things the board did to make this happen.

1. Setting up a new biometric voter register

One of the first things the new INEC did was to cancel the voters register used for the previous elections and create a new one from scratch. This was an important step for building credibility.
The commission rolled out its personnel and direct data capture machines between January and February 2011, and over 73.5 million voters registered. Now the commission has a proper biometric record to work with.

2. Using NYSC members for the job

For the first time ever, INEC decided to use “corpers” for their ad-hoc work. The corpers were the ones who did the fieldwork and dealt directly with the people. They conducted the elections. This use of corps members further instilled confidence in the voters that the election staff were neutral and trustworthy.

3. Introducing the Remodified Open Secret Ballot System (REMOBS)

For example, one recurring problem in previous elections was that it was easy for people to voting multiple times without being detected. So the commission decided that a major way to check this would be for the voting process to have two distinct phases on Election Day.
The first phase would be for voters accreditation and must be completed before the actual voting phase starts later in the day. This innovative system made multiple voting difficult since only accredited voters could cast the ballot and no accredited voter could do it twice. It worked during the 2011 elections and has been in use since then.

4. Using university staff for collation and returning

INEC hired senior academic staff to work as collation officers at all levels and also as returning officers. Their involvement gave the results some more credibility and substantially addressed fraud issues that used to be associated with declaring election results.

5. Introducing Registration Area Centres (RACs)

This was another major strategy introduced during the 2011 elections.  The RACs were points, usually public schools, where overnight camping facilities were provided for officials who would be out working on Election Day. The RACs were close to the polling booths, so officials could pass the night, charge their equipment and get to their respective polling booths early. This strategy has helped to make sure elections kick off on time.

6. Use of social media

The new INEC has been using social media to educate voters, respond to enquiries and monitor happenings on the ground before and during elections. It’s an impressive one for this commission.

7. Working with a hybrid collation strategy

As part of the strategy to secure the integrity of results recorded at the 2011 elections, INEC tried to reform the procedure for managing election results through a hybrid plan involving manual and electronic parts.
The manual procedure was that all results must be displayed at the polling units and collation centres once votes have been counted and results declared. Then the papers would be transferred to the state office for safe- keeping not later than 48 hours after each poll.
The electronic procedure was that, at least for the presidential election, collation at the state and federal level were subjected to accuracy checks by using an excel spread sheet application to eliminate computation errors. So all results were projected on a screen and publicly displayed as they were announced.
E-copies of the results were also transmitted electronically from the state collation centres to the presidential returning officer using a secure email address in order to prevent tampering with the manual copies while in transit.

8. The verification of polling Units

Before the 2011 elections, INEC visited every polling booth in the country to physically confirm that they exist and confirm their exact location. This provided the commission with a reliable guide and compendium of polling unit locations nationwide.

9. Restriction of movement

The new INEC uses security personnel to restrict movement on Election Day in order to forestall violence and fraud. This has worked very much. Now you don’t have to worry that someone will shoot you or snatch the ballot box when you go to vote. Some people don’t like to see soldiers on the streets on Election Day. However, the truth is that heavy security presence has hugely contributed to making elections safer and better in Nigeria.

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It will be recalled that as elections approach, Political analyst  Adedayo Ademuwagun writes what you need to know about why politicians are slinging mud at each other.