Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, took a commendable step last week with the unwrapping of the timetable for the 2019 general elections.The electoral umpire said the Presidential and National Assembly elections shall be held on February 16, 2019 while the elections into governorship and Houses of Assembly positions are slated for March 2, 2019. With this announcement all stakeholders in the elections have almost two years to adequately prepare for the polls.
Political parties no longer have excuses, as they must hold their annual conventions and conduct primary elections for electoral seats in line with the provisions of the Electoral Act before the dates stipulated for the elections. In the past, political parties held shoddy conventions and primary elections that left rancor and chaos on their trails. Legal fireworks that resulted from such chaos led to multiple parties’ candidates for elective positions, confusing voters and the electoral umpire. We hope that this early release of the timetable for the 2019 elections provides stakeholders with the ample opportunity to engage themselves and come up with validly elected candidates for political positions before the polls.
On its part, INEC needs to do a lot of house-keeping and adequately tackling contentious constitutional issues before the dates. One of the critical issues is the status of card readers in 2019 elections. It has been acknowledged that this technology deployed by INEC under its erstwhile Chairman Professor Attahiru Jega played a crucial role in the credibility of the polls. However, the Supreme Court’s decision in February 2016 in which held that both the Rivers State Governorship Elections Tribunal and the Court of Appeal were wrong to have anchored their decision to upturn Nyesom Wike’s victory in the governorship election on the non-use of Card Readers, the role of card readers in future elections has to be properly interrogated.
The Supreme Court ruled that until the National Assembly amends the Electoral Act to include the use of card readers in the voting process, the use or non-use of the technology would have no legal implications on the outcome of elections. With almost two years before the next elections it is high time INEC engages the National Assembly on the need to integrate the card reader into the Electoral Act, else its use in the 2019 would have no legal validity.
Another crucial issue that INEC should deal with is delineation of federal constituencies. Constituencies are supposed to be redrawn after every census exercise in order to make federal constituencies roughly equal in population, other legal factors being equal. With the nation planning to conduct another census in 2018, it is possible that delineation of constituencies may not be possible before the 2019 polls and it should be postponed till after 2019.
Other issues that INEC should deal with include ensuring continuous voter registration, with the production of the Permanent Voter’s Cards for them to avoid last-minute rush and fire-brigade measures which had complicated previous polls. Also, the owners of the 7.8 million uncollected PVCs should be encouraged to come forward and collect them. Before the 2015 general elections, inadequate distribution of PVCs was one of the reasons given by the Jonathan administration for the delay of the polls. Furthermore, the legal perspectives to the envisaged Diaspora and/or electronic voting should be dealt with and the Electoral Act appropriately amended before the polls.
The electoral umpire’s timetable is an effective two-year notice to the Federal Government, hence we call for a quick filling of the vacancy created for 33 Resident Electoral Commissioners for the states and the setting aside of adequate funds for INEC to conduct the polls. A situation in which pre-election activities are not logically concluded due to lack of funds would lead to chaos and could put the credibility of the polls in doubt.
