In strengthening and consolidating Nigeria's democracy, the three arms of government have very critical roles to play. In this interview with Wale Igbintade, the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Mr. Samson Itodo, speaks on the urgent need for electoral reforms, and how his organisation engages and supports the Independent National Electoral Commission and the National Assembly, especially young legislators, in achieving their goals and mandate
As part of the collective efforts to strengthen democratic governance in Nigeria, particularly electoral processes, how do you support the electoral umpire - INEC and the National Assembly?
In terms of the support that we provide to strengthen democracy and also the institutions, INEC and the National Assembly, we are under Component two of the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN II) Programme. So, our work to the National Assembly is geared towards building the institutional capacity of the National Assembly. And the reason why, as an institution, we make this investment in the National Assembly is pretty much for two reasons. One, our belief is, if the National Assembly is strengthened as a critical component of the democratic process, then it will improve the quality of legislative oversight, as well as representative functions that the National Assembly performs.
A critical example is, if the National Assembly is making laws, how do we ensure that those laws are responsive, one to the needs and the priorities of people, and that they also deepen the quality of our democracy? But you need a certain amount of skill as a legislator, to deliver on those expectations, and this is why our support towards strengthening the capacity of the National Assembly and lawmakers helps in enhancing the effectiveness of the lawmakers and the institutions in promoting transparency, accountability, and responsive governance. So, we support Committees in the National Assembly. We provide technical support, training around strategic planning, around citizens' engagement, but also helping them develop tools that they require to perform. On the other hand, we also work with young legislators in the National Assembly. We work extensively around bills, scrutiny and analysis, and drafting motions that are people-centric. All these are geared towards ensuring that the National Assembly is able to deliver.
On the Electoral Commission, we do a lot of work around citizen mobilisation, either around voter registration or participating in elections. We also provide oversight, because INEC, as an institution, requires some measure of oversight around those elections that it conducts. So, we deploy observers to watch over the process at the local and at the national level, and the findings from that is what we integrate into our electoral reform campaigns. So, currently, we are synthesising all the recommendations for reforms, and advocating for administrative reforms that INEC can undertake, but also contributing to the reform of the electoral legal framework, that is, the reform of the Electoral Act.
Yiaga Africa is a member of the technical committee set up by the National Assembly to address this issue around electoral reforms. These are ways that we are supporting these institutions. We don't work with the judiciary directly, but our major focus is the National Assembly, as well as the election monitoring body.
How does the funding that your organisation receive from the European Union help you to support INEC and the National Assembly to carry out their statutory and constitutional mandate?
The funding from the European Union has helped a great deal. First, we are operating within a civic space that is shrinking, and at the same time, the funding space is also shrinking. Civil society organisations are unable to perform their functions because of these limitations. So, the funding that we receive from the EU helps to promote institutional strengthening, but more importantly, it also positions Yiaga Africa to support these institutions. The funding also helps in producing resources and materials that are geared towards increasing public awareness around elections and electoral reform processes. It also helps in producing resources that assess the performance of the legislature. Recently, we supported the Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to produce a scorecard of the functions, and how he has performed in office in the last one year.
Prior to that, we would not get this information in the public space. In fact, political leaders don't even see the value in communicating to the public because they don't feel they are accountable to members of the public. But this time, we have that document, which was produced with support from the EU-SDGN. We also work with Committees in the House of Representatives, including Women Affairs and Social Development, and the Young Parliamentarians Forum. All of these have been made possible through these resources. We recently hosted a citizens town hall on electoral reforms with the Committee on INEC, both the Senate and the House, that brought citizens to engage with members of the Committee. That couldn't have been possible without the funding that we received from the EU. So, the funding is advancing and promoting institutional development. It is strengthening civil society groups like Yiaga Africa and other EU-SDGN partners, to protect democracy and promote accountability. It is also supporting our democratic institutions like INEC and the National Assembly, to fulfill their mandate.
Speaking more broadly, aside from funding developmental interventions across the country, how has the presence and partnership with the European Union helped to strengthen Nigeria's democratic governance?
The presence of the EU has greatly helped and strengthened democratic governance. First, Nigeria is part of a committee of nations that subscribe to democratic tenets. Now, the EU, on the one hand, also has some values around democracy that strongly align with the tenets that Nigeria subscribes to. The EU's presence also helps in promoting those democratic values in Nigeria. The second advantage, or what you call the benefits of the presence, the EU engages in bilateral engagements with the Nigerian government. But it's one of the leading funders that provide aid to Nigeria, and that itself supports the country to meet some of its development objectives and some of its democratic commitments.
I think that presence, the proximity that it has with civil society and other institutions, cannot be taken for granted, because, yes, the EU as an institution is contributing, in no small measure, to developing the civic space. It is also helping to amplify some of the concerns of civic groups and citizen groups, which is a very unique role that the EU plays, whilst also providing funding to advance our development. However, I say that the contribution it makes, by providing a space for constructive discourse between different stakeholders, is actually phenomenal.
The National Assembly, being an arm of the government, plays a very critical role in democratic governance in Nigeria. What targeted support does your organisation provide to members of the National Assembly to improve their skills and knowledge of legislative practices, procedures, and Committee rules?
One role and service that we provide to the National Assembly is capacity building. The turnover of legislators in the National Assembly is very high; about 80 percent of legislators in the National Assembly are first-timers. Now, legislative practice and procedure is a very advanced and complex field of governance that requires capacity development, because most of the lawmakers in the National Assembly do not have any training on legislative procedure. We train legislators once they come into the National Assembly; equip them with the skills that they require to make laws, to provide oversight, and then also represent their constituents. Secondly, we also provide capacity building for the bureaucracy of the National Assembly, because the National Assembly as an institution also requires some level of development - development around the institutional frameworks that should be in place that will enhance the quality of legislative governance. Also, what are the policies that need to be in place that facilitate engagement with citizens? So, we deliver those kinds of parliamentary support.
The other thing we do in supporting the National Assembly, is we strengthen Committees to perform the requisite oversight necessary to enhance governance. So, we develop toolkits in conjunction with members of respective Committees, to help them improve the quality of the oversight that they conduct. This is because legislative oversight is one instrument that is used to hold the Executive to account. It is also to deepen the quality of governance, ensuring that what the government promises it delivers to the people. We use the toolkits as monitoring and evaluation frameworks that strengthen the legislature.
One exciting aspect of our work in the National Assembly is the citizen-legislator relationship, which is the weakest link in the entire gamut of the responsibilities of the legislature. We host town hall meetings, support legislators to host town hall meetings. When legislators turned one year, most of those legislators needed to conduct town hall meetings to account for their representation. So, across the entire country, we supported legislators, and our priority was young legislators, to host citizens' town hall meetings to give account of their leadership. It is also to give the public and constituents the opportunity to highlight demands that they require from their legislator. These are some of the things that our targeted support to the National Assembly is delivering. We've been involved in drafting legislations, as well as analysing and scrutinising bills. This is one of our core functions. Legislators who require technical support in drafting legislations, come to us, and we've been supporting legislators with drafting those bills, and where there are bills of public interest, Yiaga Africa analyse and scrutinise the bills, and then produces what we call legislative briefs, which lawmakers use to enhance the quality of their debate.
One of the things we also do in supporting committees, for instance, during the appropriation debates, we analyse budgets, write briefs on those budgets, and give the committees. They use those briefs to ask Ministers and Heads of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) when they come for budget defense, and we've been providing that support to Committees that we work with in the National Assembly.
How do you support the Judiciary to ensure the effective administration of electoral justice, particularly supporting the Judges of the Election Petition Tribunals?
We don't work directly with the judiciary. That's not part of our portfolio. Instead, we work closely with young people. So, we do "ReadytoRun." ReadytoRun is mainly getting young people who are running for office, improving their capacity for campaigns before they get into elections, and preparing them, and I would say, with a high sense of humility, that most of the people that we have trained are currently in the legislature, and even whilst in the legislature, the EU, as part of its sort of electoral cycle approach, also provides resources to support these young people when they are currently in office. So, the EU is supporting the ReadytoRun initiative, which is an initiative that was largely spotted by the EU right after the passage of the not-too-young-to-run Act.
What roles will your organisation be playing in the forthcoming bye-elections in Edo and Ondo states? Also, can you share with us your preparations and plans for the forthcoming general election in 2027?
In Edo and Ondo states, we're deploying citizen observers to observe those elections. For Edo, we are deploying the PVT, which is a standard methodology that assesses the accuracy of the results, but more importantly, speaks to the transparency and credibility process. We're going to be observing those elections as an election observer. Secondly, we are currently engaged in a voter register audit; we're auditing the register of Edo and Ondo to assess their quality, their accuracy, and their credibility. But we're also involved in conducting election academies. We are training party agents from four major political parties, doing a Training of Trainers (TOT) for them, and then they would now, in turn, train their party agents. The reason why we're training party agents is because based on experience, party agents deployed during elections are incompetent in most cases.
Secondly, they do not understand the role and the functions, as well as the procedure, and this is why they engage in all forms of interference with the conduct of elections on election day.
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As a way of strengthening oversight of party agents on the day of elections, we're providing that training. We're also working closely with civil society in those states, and then helping them understand the complexity of our electoral management process, and doing some community outreach, and get out the vote campaigns.
For 2027, it's not far anymore. It's about 900 days until the 2027 elections. We are currently finalising our strategy for the elections. We've built about 12 scenarios; we're engaged in scenario planning for those elections. We are going to be deploying our election manipulation risk index. But currently, our first priority is getting the reform process through. So, we are galvanising and working closely with other EU-SDGN partners to advocate for the reform to be concluded as soon as possible. We are worried that President Tinubu has not articulated his electoral reform agenda. So, we want to get him to actually do that. And then, we look at how we start preparing for the transitions that will happen in INEC, because a new leadership will be appointed to INEC, and we are very committed to advocating that the Constitution should be respected and upheld when the appointments into INEC will be conducted. Of course, we will do voter mobilisation, especially first-time voters, and we'll also be observing the elections, but also occupying us, is the role of Local Government elections. Local Government elections are going to be a permanent feature in the work that we do, building to 2027.
Any final words to all stakeholders in the electoral process, particularly in working towards free, fair, credible, and inclusive elections in Nigeria?
If we want to further consolidate and strengthen our democracy, there are three things we must do as a country. The first one is that there have to be consequences when the State decides to assault human rights, clamp down on protesters, and not listen to the people when they speak. The level of impunity and attacks on citizens when they speak or when they express dissent of opinion is troubling, and that needs to be addressed. There are over 1,000 people who joined the EndBadGovernance protest, who are currently in detention. That itself is an indication of democratic backsliding.
The second point is this institutional capture; organisations like INEC have been captured by political actors. They appoint partisan individuals to INEC, to capture INEC and make it difficult for INEC to organise credible elections. The more you continue to capture INEC, the National Assembly, State Houses of Assemblies, and State Independent Electoral Commissions, you are undermining democracies. The more you ignore the judgment of courts, or also capture the judiciary, what you have simply done is to undermine democracy in every respect.
The third critical point is the investment we need to make in political education. We need to educate our people to understand governance, democracy, and how to enforce their rights. That is the only way that we are going to liberate our society from the strange hold of the very predatory political class.
