The solution to Nigerian electoral transparency would come where the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Nigerian Judiciary do not collude to rig the elections across the country.
Guest speaker at the “2024 Democracy Day Lecture: June 12 and Quest for Transparent Electoral Process in Nigeria Perspectives on the Fourth Republic”, Prof. Sam Amadi said a transparent electoral process would be guaranteed when the transparent y associated with the recent South African election dominates the process.
According to him, Nigerians should demand from the independent National Electoral Commission what it has done with the money it received to prosecute the 2023 election which it rigged.
He said he cannot join the call for more funding of an institution which did not justify the stupendous funding it got to prosecute the 2023 election and has yet to account for it.
Amadi challenged the Labour Party Caucus of the National Assembly to champion the call for the interrogation of the Independent National Electoral Commission to explain to Nigerians how the huge funds allocated to her for the 2023 election ended in controversy.
He maintained that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was accountable to the Nigerian people and it must account for how it deployed public funds for the 2023 elections.
Amadi who said an election result should announce itself Una transparent process said any judge who says that electronic voting of the 2023 election was not critical to the process was wrong.
He said “In 1993, Prof. Godfrey Mwosu did a free and fair election that resulted in winning southeast south-south, Muslim Kano and the result was not declared. The result was annulled
“Today, we have not improved our election. In 2023, the result was annulled by pulling down the IRev, the INEC annulled the 2023 election.
“Till today, I NEC has not provided a justification. Why electronic transmission did not work. I am saying this openly as a lawyer, with great expertise on the legal front. That INEC was bound by the regulations it made. Every judge that says otherwise is wrong.
“When a regulator says we are going to go this way, through a lawful making power. It cannot go this demonstrates other) way it has to take all the participants along that new trajectory.
“INEC has continued to say that results would be transmitted electronically. Therefore, anything less was outside the decision of the regulator.
He said by virtue of that position electronic transfer would have eliminated all the doubts expressed on the outcome of the election.
“We fought for electronic transmission because the previous election has been rigged through the movement from voting centres to collation centres, we wanted real-time declaration.
“South Africa did that recently, India has done that. Across the world and across the nations, transparency prevailed.
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“We must get to beyond where INEC would decide to call the result. The result should be self-declared.
When people vote they go home with the result. We do not have to wait for a Chief Orient coming to announce a result. In those days to go to a coven to ask the gods. Results declare themselves.
President Jonathan made a statement recently that two institutions are killing democracy in Nigeria. They are INEC which rigs the election and the courts which rigs the result.
If we do not fix these two bodies, we cannot fix democracy.
The presumption of democracy is that leaders will respond to the electorate, why will the leader respond to the electorate if the electorate has no power to vote him in or vote him out?
He insisted that democracy fails when elections are reduced to mere shams and the Nigerian election, he said must never be allowed to tread that path again.
He said “The 2023 election would have been an election but it turned out to be a shambolic because INEC shut down the only electronic device that would have restrained it.
Amadi said future elections would be in error without a cleansing of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
He said it was wrong for Nigerian politicians to be seeking the favour of the independent National election instead of selling themselves to the electorates.
Earlier in his remark the National Chairman of the Labour Party, Julius Abure had said that following the experience of the party in the 2023 general election. It would pursue a WHOLISTIC electoral reform.
Abure said the party believes that with the current electoral system, it may suffer the same fate in the ballot, hence the determination to pursue a wholistic electoral reform.
