Ahead of the 2027 Elections, the Joint Committee on Electoral Matters in the National Assembly recently held a one-day public hearing on the proposed amendments to the Electoral Act 2022. In this interview, Mr Festus Okoye, a former National Commissioner and Director of Information and Voter Education at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) shares some perspectives with ONWUKA NZESHI on the proposals

We’ve been doing electoral reforms all these years. What difference do you think this one will make?

Well, I think it’s important for nations and countries to, once in a while, look at their electoral processes, look at the gaps, look at the lacuna, and try to fill them up. But what is important is that any electoral reform must be an electoral reform that is done with clear conscience.

Electoral reform must also go with what I call attitudinal reform. Unless you reform the attitude of people, you cannot have good electoral reform. You know, sometimes we do electoral reform, and then after one election season, we undermine it and then we come back to electoral reform. So, I think that why electoral reform is very, very important is for us to look at our electoral process, for us to look at our own procedures, for us to look at our own processes and also for us to look back at previous elections and try to plug the gaps. It is important for us to also develop what I call the democratic spirit.

Without that democratic spirit that recognizes the rule of law, that recognizes due process and also recognizes the fact that Nigerians have elected to live by democratic precepts, any electoral reform will still be undermined by the same people who do not want democracy to flourish. That’s really the challenge.

Are you implying that why we keep repeating electoral reforms every four years is because we are not really ready for democracy?

No, the Nigerian people are ready for democracy. The Nigerian people want to live under a democratic system of government. The Nigerian people love democracy and that is why on Election Day, you see 80-year-old men and women going to the polling station or the polling unit as early as 5 a.m. in the morning to cast their ballots.

That is why you see people moving their cooking utensils to the polling unit because they want to vote, they want to assert their sovereign right to elect their leaders. But the truth of the matter is that some of the leaders are not ready for democracy because they can survive under a democratic system of government, and they can also survive under military rule. So, if they undermine democracy, they will metamorphose into commissioners, permanent secretaries, and ministers under a military regime. So, they don’t care whether this democracy survives or collapses. They don’t care.

But the ordinary people of this country want to live under a democratic system of government. And that is why civil society groups and organizations respond to every request for a public hearing and respond to every request for us to amend our constitutional and electoral framework. But I believe that we, Nigerians, have really achieved a lot n terms of our electoral process and also in terms of our democratic process. But you know, democracy and the electoral process is not a hundred metre dash. We must keep on refining it, we must keep on fighting for it and we must keep on consolidating it. And unless we do this, the political elites who do not believe in democracy will collapse the process and we are not going to allow them to collapse the process.

You must have seen what the joint committee is recommending. Do you think that their recommendations will really make the difference in terms of the kind of Electoral Act Nigerians are looking for?

I think that there are some recommendations that align with what Nigerians are looking for and what Nigerians want. There are some provisions of the Electoral Act that contradict each other, so they want to remove those contradictions. There are also some provisions in the Electoral Act that are not properly aligned. They want to realign some of them.

Secondly, there are also some issues in the Electoral Act that need to be looked into again. The whole issue about Diaspora voting, people are canvassing for Diaspora voting. Without aligning with our democratic process, can the electoral management body handle it? If we bring votes from Sudan, from Ghana, from Chad, from Niger, from the US, from Germany, and so on and so forth, will they not have the implication of altering, in a very significant manner, the voting landscape in Nigeria? That is another issue.

Thirdly, there is the issue of inmate voting. Do we have the capacity to handle inmate voting at this point in time, taking into consideration the vulnerable nature of our correctional centre? Or is it a long-term thing that we should set a date and allow the electoral management body to work out modalities on inmate voting?

On the issue of special voting, early voting, one of the issues about early voting is that security agencies should vote, journalists should vote, election workers should vote, and so on, essential service workers should vote. But look at the security agencies; look at Section 26 of the Electoral Act. Section 26 of the Electoral Act makes it clear that every person involved in the electoral process on Election Day, in terms of security agents, in terms of presiding officers, in terms of assistant presiding officers, must subscribe to oath of neutrality and oath of loyalty.

So, if you have voted for a particular political party, can you in turn still claim that you are neutral? My answer is no. So, if you want early voting, you must also work out modalities for early voting, and also amend some sections of the Electoral Act that talks about neutrality, in which case you are saying that those people who are going to engage in early voting, security agents, presiding officers, assistant presiding officers, they should no longer be neutral.

So, these are the things we must look at. So, I think that while this public hearing is important, it’s for us to get feedback from the public on what they want, and then for the National Assembly to sit back and then look at the whole gamut of all the positions that have been presented, and see which ones align with the law, which ones align with our democracy precepts and which ones are implementable at this point in time. And I think it’s very, very important.

Talking about neutrality, some people have raised a very important issue here; about the appointment of INEC chairman and the commissioners. And they are saying, like what Uwais recommended in his report, that it should not be business as usual. The President, who is a contestant, who is a player in the election, should not be appointing the referee. What do you think?

I was a member of the Electoral Reform Committee, otherwise known as the Uwais Committee. I was also a civil society delegate to the 2014 National Conference. Now, the work of the Electoral Reform Committee was done 17 years ago. The electoral landscape and the judicial landscape of Nigeria have changed.

In the Justice Uwais Report, we recommended that the NJC should advertise the position of the INEC Chairman, screen and make recommendations to the National Assembly on who should be appointed. But the truth of the matter is that the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the one who appoints the Chairman of the NJC.

So, you can see, the implication is that the Chief Justice of Nigeria also sits in the panel to consider presidential election petitions. So, if INEC has been heavily indicted in an election petition and the chairman of that INEC was “appointed” by the NJC, what do you make of that?

My own proposition is that we should have something like a selection committee – that is, the President can empanel a selection committee made up of the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, President of the TUC, President of Nigerian Medical Association and heads of other professional bodies to advertise the positions in INEC and then screen. Look for three people for each position, for both the chairman and national commissioners, and recommend to the President. It is a question of saying look, we have screened, we have looked at all these people.

Please, among these three, pick one. And then the President picks one and sends it to the National Assembly for purposes of confirmation. But for you to completely remove the appointing authority from the President at this point in time, where do you domicile it because the NJC where you want to domicile it is appointed by the same President. So, I think that while I completely agree with the recommendation, I believe that the recommendations need refinement taking into consideration the exigencies of the moment. Because as of today, the judiciary has become or Nigerians have made the judiciary part of the problems of the electoral process; so we don’t want to also overburden the judiciary with trust issues anymore. And so let the President constitute a selection committee that will look at the gamut of our electoral process and make recommendations for him to appoint one person. Somebody must do the appointment and there’s no way we can run away from it.

You’re a very vast person on the issue of elections. You’ve been in and out of the election management body. How is it done in other countries? Why do other countries have better elections than Nigeria all the time?

No, no, you see, the conduct of elections is a very, very complex matter. And when you are talking about the conduct of elections, you must look at the demography of a country. You must look at the economy of a country. You must look at the political practices in a particular country. And you must look at all the surrounding issues, the social context of elections. Now, the conduct of elections in Nigeria is like conducting elections in two-thirds of all the countries of West Africa. We are talking of an election where you have over 93 million registered voters. We are talking of an election where you have over 176,000 polling units. We are talking of an election where you have over 10,809 registration areas. So it’s huge. And you’re also talking of an election where some areas in Nigeria are not motorable; where the commission has to hire motorbikes, hire boats, hire human carriers. You are talking of an election where the political elites are also desperate for power. So for me, Nigeria has gotten the electoral framework in terms of the conduct of elections right. Our next target, our next project should be to get the political parties to do what is right. The political parties in Nigeria as of today do not believe in free, fair, and transparent elections. And that is where the problem is.

Somebody was talking about the number of people who go out to vote on Election Day. If the atmosphere is toxic, how can you go out to vote? If I am not allowed to step out of my house on account of political violence, how can I go out and vote?

If the security agencies are unable to protect me on Election Day, how can I go out to vote? If the political thugs, who are heavily armed, hijack ballot papers, hijack ballot boxes, how can I go out to vote? So I think that the political elite must accept that democracy has come to stay, and must accept the rule of law as we progress. We must accept that for you to have a good election, you must have the democratic spirit. Unless we do this, there will definitely continue to be problems in our elections.