Maurice Iwu
6 July 2009
(Page 3 of 3)
Indeed there are three key stakeholders in the electoral process; the political parties/political class, the election management body and the electorate. These exist under the overarching laws that guide conduct within the system. Any reform that does not extend to all of these stakeholders will be incomplete.
The Commission, mindful of its own lapses and needs has indeed been reforming itself and its operations in the last four years. In the wake of the 2007 elections and its experiences, the Commission moved swiftly to make some fundamental changes. It promptly dropped the use of ad hoc staff drawn from the open society for the conduct of elections. Since the Commission cannot raise enough personnel to conduct general election across the country from its staff strength, the use of support personnel from outside specially drawn for the conduct of elections has always been there. With a number of the ad hoc staff proving to be agents of politicians, the Commission has abolished their use and their place taken in National Youth Service Corp members. Encouragingly; these have shown great promise in the by-elections that have been part of since after the 2007 elections.
I am here to present to you a proposal for you to participate actively in the strengthening of electoral democracy in Nigeria. Because of the large number of staff required for general elections, in addition to the NYSC members, I propose that members of the NSCU should partner with INEC to provide the additional staff needed from members of the Union. This means that the elections will be manned by INEC staff, youth corps personnel and members of the NSCU. In the proposed partnership, the Commission could begin from the 3rd quarter of 2009 to train and retrain the needed additional personnel for the 2011 elections. The Electoral Institute, which was established in 2005 as our main capacity building organ will undertake the training of both the NYSC personnel and members of your Union in electoral studies. If this proposal is acceptable to you, the Commission will work out the modalities of the arrangement with your leadership as soon as possible.
The Commission has recommended and is pursuing the idea of staggering the elections. The immediate benefit of this arrangement is that it will afford the Commission better logistics management and more efficient deployment of manpower for the conduct of elections.
The 2007 general elections were a great challenge to the Commission and the nation. There were lapses, no doubt, as is often the case with human endeavours, but the accomplishment of the elections outweighs the shortcomings by far.As was noted in the Official Report on the 2007 General Elections, "Elections the world over are not mere events; they are processes planned over a period of time.Planning,as experience has shown yields positive results". The Commission has learnt its lesions and the quality of re-run elections it has conducted after the 2007 elections testify to continued enhancement of the electoral process in the country.
But the Independent National Electoral commission is not the owner of Nigeria's democracy. It is only the facilitating institution of the electoral process. Such resort by a tribe of uncritical critics to outright denial of the incremental progress of the country in its quest for political development either because of a temporary failure of one or few individuals to attain their political ambition at the moment or as a result of a personal disappointment that the system has not yet delivered on a desired expectation is neither helpful to the system nor to the individual.
Even as we hold firmly and candidly that attaining ten years of uninterrupted democracy is a milestone for Nigeria or that the success of transiting from one elected government that completed its full terms to another is historic or that representative governance at its worse is still better than a dictatorship, the truth also remains that the political system in the country could do better both in structural efficiency and in delivery of the dividends of democracy.
By organizing such a forum as this to gain insight into the real problems of the electoral process and then proceed there from to seek an enduring solutions to the problems that drag back the system, the Nigerian Civil Service Union is boldly making a claim that all well meaning Nigerians should make; that indeed this is our democracy and setting it on the path to sustainability is the duty of all of us.
Thank you and God bless Nigeria.
Excerpts of a lecture presented by Professor Iwu, Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission at the Pre-conference seminar of the Quadrennial Delegates Conference of the Nigeria Civil Society Union in Enugu, July 1,2009
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