All elections in one day — The Nation Editorial

This is laudable. It is cost and time efficient as well as eliminates bandwagon effect.

Members of the House of Representatives are processing a bill for amendment of the Electoral Act 2022 to have all polls in a general election held in one day. This is with the aim to save time and money for the country and avert bandwagon effect associated with staggered elections.

Other proposals in the amendment bill are that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) be mandated by law to transmit election results electronically, and that the electoral body be required to conduct fresh voter registration every 10 years to update its voter roll and weed out the record of dead persons.

The amendment bill sponsored by Francis Waive, a lawmaker representing Ughelli North/Ughelli South/Udu Federal Constituency of Delta State on the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform, recently scaled second reading in the green chamber and was referred to the House Committee on Electoral Matters.

In his argument for the bill, Waive said though the 2022 Electoral Act was enacted by the National Assembly to ensure credibility of the electoral process and make results of elections acceptable to Nigerians, there was need to correct obvious defects in the legislation and get the nation prepared for future polls.

On general election scheduling, he proposed a reworking of Section 28 of the principal act to allow all elections to hold on same day. The amendment clause read: “Subject to paragraph (a) of this section, and without prejudice to other sections of this act, election into the office of the President, National Assembly, State Governors and State Houses of Assembly shall be conducted on the same day.”

The convention by INEC has been to conduct national elections into the Presidency, Senate and House of Representatives in one day, and state elections into governorship offices and houses of assembly on another day – usually two weeks apart. But Waive said conducting the polls on two separate days plied much pressure on Nigerians and their businesses because the country was always in shutdown mode. “If the country can conduct three elections in one day, we can as well conduct the five elections on the same day,” he argued.

We are in total agreement with the lawmaker on this point. The staggered pattern of the general election has always translated to duplication of costs – both in terms of logistics by the electoral body and its manpower deployment. In other words, INEC has to warehouse ballot papers at the Central Bank of Nigeria ahead of the different polls at duplicated costs; transport election materials to polling units at two different times, with the humongous logistics involved; and also deploy election staff, security operatives and allied personnel to the same polling units on two different occasions at monumental costs.

Holding the elections simultaneously on one day would collapse costs to be incurred to once, which should be healthier for the national treasury that funds the polls. Moreover, the shutdown of the economy associated with restriction of movement on polling days will happen only once. And there is sense to be made of the suggestion that holding all the elections simultaneously would avert suspected bandwagon effect of one set of elections on the other, since voting for all the constituencies would be done simultaneously and the outcomes made known simultaneously. In all, there is little or nothing to lose but much to gain with conducting the elections same day.

Another proposal by Waive is to amend Section 60 (5) of the Electoral Act 2022 to stipulate mandatory electronic transmission of results by INEC. That section presently provides that the “presiding officer shall transfer the results including the total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot in a manner as prescribed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).”

The lawmaker argued that the framing of the law harboured loopholes that litigants exploited in the 2023 elections. Electronic transmission of results was one of the contentious issues that trailed the February 25, 2023, presidential poll because technical glitches hindered many officials of the electoral body from transmitting results to the INEC Results Viewing (IRev) portal as the umpire had promised. Waive canvassed specific provision mandating presiding officers to transmit election results and accreditation figures electronically, saying the National Assembly should not make laws that are vague.

Much as the intention for the proposed amendment may be genuine, we argue that the wisdom in the law as it presently exists is not to tie INEC’s hand and allow the electoral body make a call based on realities that confront it in the course of carrying out its mandate. Elections are sociological projects, not quantum physics that is predictable to the last decimal point, and exigencies do often arise that necessitate the umpire making a call within the bounds of law in accordance with the particular situation that it comes up against. The manoeuvring room provided by the present framing of the law enables the electoral body to carry through with polls in the face of such exigencies. Tying its hands with hardline provisions amidst exigencies could crash rather than enhance elections, and as thus it is ill-advised.

Also, Waive proposed a reworking of Section 10 of the principal act to make INEC conduct full-scale voter re-registration every 10 years besides continuous registration of those who clock 18 years. According to him, revalidation of the existing voter roll at intervals by the commission is not enough to eliminate ineligible registrants like dead persons, and as such cannot give the country a clean register. “Without prejudice to the provision of this section and subject to subsection (2), every 10 years the commission shall carry out a re-registration exercise of all eligible voters in preparation for the next general elections,” the proposed amendment clause read.

Here again, we differ from this proposal. Conducting voter re-registration every 10 years is such an all-involving and cost-intensive enterprise that it would not only consume the electoral body and distract it from other core electoral duties, it would also sap the Nigerian treasury of massive resources required to carry out the exercise. Meanwhile, there is need to harmonise data banks being hosted by data-gathering agencies of the Nigerian economy. A tidier option would be to ensure efficiency of record-keeping of births and deaths by the National Population Commission (NPC), and avail INEC of these records to update its voter register.

In any event, dead registrants on the roll should pose no potentially abusive factor in elections if the electoral body ensures fidelity with its processes involving the use of Biometric Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices. After all, dead people won’t show up at polling units for accreditation. Where political actors or electoral staff undermine the integrity of the process by manipulating the voter roll, the onus falls on the judicial system to bring such culprits firmly and speedily to justice.

And in the event that the conventional justice system cannot meet up the sheer volume of the task, we recommend that the proposal for an electoral offences tribunal be revisited.