Nothing must make the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), relapse into the situation that gave its image a heavy blow in the last presidential election, but everything must be put in place to make amends and recover from its failures.
The admonition came from its former spokesman, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, who regretted that the profile of the commission, which had risen astronomically in the last two years or so, nosedived again, after the election of February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections, adding that the electoral umpire must do everything in its powers to redeem itself.
Osaze-Uzzi, who was a guest of Politics Today, a current affairs programme on Channels Television, spoke against the technical glitches with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), which INEC blamed for failure to upload of results to the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV), real time.
He said: “You could not envisage a situation with the tension of the country. With the uncertainty and all that has happened in the last 10, 12 day. I don’t think INEC could afford doing any wrong again. Things went awry last time around and confidence, I think, is at an all-time low. Some people may begin to get over it, but I think the vast majority of Nigerians are satisfied.”
Hinting that the commission was not happy with the way things turned out, he, said: “Trust is a fragile thing. The trust the electoral umpire has managed to build over several election cycles has dwindled. INEC conducted elections in 1998, 1999 – people just wanted to get rid of the military, it wasn’t perfect but it was acceptable. In 2003, people were not happy and 2007 was the epoch of it all. Trust was next to zero.
“With the changes in personnel and reforms brought into place, trust began to build up, reaching a crescendo in 2022. By the time you brought more technology, by the time you conducted Osun, Edo, Ekiti, Ondo, and then they saw the way technology improved the process, Osun was picture-perfect. People [said], ‘They could really do this.’
“Expectations were now high and people were ready to forgive the sins of the past. I think at that time, INEC became one of the most trusted public institutions.” He faulted the electoral umpire for its prioritisation of timing above process in its conduct of the presidential elections, saying: “There was a call to be made: Do you delay things and ensure you follow the process to the letter, even if it means delaying this thing for a week or whatever period of time?
“Or do you save time, save tension, just go ahead and bypass some of the processes laid down in your regulations? I think it took the former. This time around, I think process triumphed over timing?”