The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, says it is set to conduct a governorship election in Ondo state as scheduled for next Saturday November 16, 2024. The commission has also given firm assurances that all would be well. Whether or not people believe the electoral body is not easy to tell. In truth, whereas there are a few permanent optimists who would always look forward to the assurances ending in successful elections, there are at the same time sceptics who justifiably think otherwise. History teaches this latter group that the narratives currently coming out of INEC and the nation’s security agencies are exactly same as those of previous locations where the people ended up disappointed.

There is therefore no evidence that Nigeria’s subsisting electoral deficiencies will this time around vanish in Ondo state next Saturday. It is noteworthy that Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the ?INEC chair has personally visited the state in the last couple of days not just to ascertain the level of preparedness but also the status of the electoral tools as well as the processes and procedures lined up for the contest. But it was essentially a routine visit which he usually makes to every location just before voting day. In other words, the visit is incapable of ensuring that all will be well. In addition, all the promises made in the state last week at a stakeholders’ meeting concerning issues such as prompt deployment and early arrival of electoral personnel and materials were also made but not strictly kept in Edo state in September.

Perhaps, it is important to make the point that what INEC should prioritize now is how to deal with the devil in its electoral room which is the collation process. This is because if all electoral materials are fit for purpose and the process goes well, there is still the vexed issue of the general belief that votes no longer count in Nigeria? What this suggests, is that efforts ought to be made to have a transparent collation of votes. As this column suggested last week, it is time to put an end to the use of unauthorized collation venues and the forced recess during which time alleged manipulation of results takes place. Put differently, INEC has an obligation to ensure that results declared at polling centres are not different from those presented at local government areas and state level.

Part of what can make the collation process transparent is to allow all accredited observers and journalists to have access to the collation venues all through the process.  According to INEC, the coming Ondo governorship election would have “the largest number for any off-cycle governorship election in Nigeria.” Already accredited for the polls, are 3,554 observers from 111 domestic and international organisations consisting of “700 journalists from over 100 radio, television, newspaper, and online media organisations, with no less than 129 female journalists.” By accrediting such a large number of observers, journalists and indeed, party agents, INEC demonstrated its preparedness to follow international best practices. Unfortunately, during collation, some of the accredited observers and party agents are suddenly denied access.

Yet all party agents are identifiable with “accreditation tags bearing their names, photographs, and location of deployment as well as added QR code to the tags that can be read even from mobile phone applications.” What this alone suggests, is that it is not rocket science for the commission to use the Ondo election to correct past mistakes. Part of INEC’s dilemma is that insider abuses during elections have become prevalent. Speaking in Akure last week, the INEC chair warned all the staff of the commission that “there will be consequences for dereliction of duty in any way or form.” The posture of the commission does not portray that of ‘charity beginning at home.’ With more than one month after the Edo election, we are yet to hear of the number of staff penalized for their conduct which embarrassed the commission.

INEC is either unwilling to penalize staff in line with the reluctance of the political class to allow for the emergence of an electoral offences tribunal or probably shy of washing her dirty linen in public – a strategy that is clearly ill advisable. Of course, publicising disciplinary measures against erring staff can to some extent boost public confidence in the electoral body. In fairness to INEC, many actors in an election process are hard to manage because they are not INEC staff.

For instance, it is obviously not easy for INEC to manage law enforcement operatives deployed to election duties. Consequently, vote buying which security agencies condone would be difficult to stop. There is also the fact that all the major political parties are involved in it, just as voters themselves look forward to it especially now that the nation’s economy is exceedingly tight. In which case, it is persuasive to imagine that vote buying would more likely persist in the coming election.

In many agencies, lobbying for deployment to election duties has reportedly become more intense than the struggle to be posted to checkpoints on the highways. Elections now provide opportunities to help favourite staff to attain huge commercial gains. In such an all-comers-game, what now plays out is the formation of cartels which share gains to members of each cartel. This is a worrisome development which INEC is poorly equipped to stop. Understandably, many stakeholders who attended the forum convened by INEC in Akure last week to reach some consensus on how to attain free and fair elections appealed more to the police than INEC not to compromise next Saturday’s governorship election in Ondo state.

The inability to have a level playing field during elections is another problem. The opposition political parties are more bothered about the growing phenomenon of ‘federal power’ during Nigerian elections. Those who think that INEC assurances of credible elections will neutralize federal power need to think again. To start with, nothing has been done about the presence of partisan commissioners in INEC. They got in because efforts to invalidate their nominations were blocked by members of the ruling party of the relevant committee in the National Assembly. Such commissioners having been brought in for an unpatriotic purpose are more likely to meet the purpose for which they were nominated. The greater pain here is that any ruling party would act like the current one if the roles are reversed.

The opposition parties that are deeply worried about the presence of commissioner Oluwatoyin Babalola in Ondo INEC certainly have more reasons than the argument that she is the equivalent of an indigene of the state. The electoral body has no business engaging in the debate for or against her. Instead, there is wisdom in recognising that if stakeholders are opposed to a particular electoral commissioner, it is better to redeploy the official to another state. It does not mean that the official has been found guilty of anything; all that needs to be appreciated is that apprehension by team players that a referee may not be impartial during a game is enough reason to redeploy the official and establish beyond reasonable doubt that like Caeser’s wife every electoral commissioner is above board.

INEC itself must be prepared to play the game by its rules. The nation is aware that the commission is in a position to stop its election results from being controversial. The results declared at the polling centre being the only one that represents the sacred choice of the people, should never be experimented upon. What is more, nothing should be done to give the impression that anything is shrouded in secrecy. If next Saturday’s election in Ondo state is truly one where the electoral body is determined to correct past mistakes, no room should be given for the alleged printing of result forms with same serial numbers just as there is no need to exclude duly accredited persons from certain segments of the process.

The healthy television debate between the APC and PDP candidates the other day underscored the fact that Ondo politicians have come of age. INEC can show similar maturity by playing down on the publicity of cosmetic ceremonies like the arrival of sensitive or non-sensitive materials, stakeholders’ meetings, peace accords and indeed LIVE transmission of the declaration of controversial results. Instead, it should enthrone a transparent collation of votes. Here is hoping that INEC would prove her critics wrong next Saturday.