The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has expressed its readiness to commence the implementation of some of the recommendations made by stakeholders from the outcome of 2023 general elections. INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu made this known yesterday when the new European Union Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Gautier Mignot, paid him a courtesy call to the commission in Abuja.
Mahmud disclosed that that the commission had already commenced work towards the review of its planning tools, such as the Strategic Plan and the Election Project Plan, for the next general elections.
He disclosed that since the 2023 general elections, the commission had received lots of reports suggesting reforms from as much as 206 national and foreign groups and international organisations accredited to observe the elections.
He explained that the stakeholders, including the European Union Election Observation Mission, EU-EOM, had put forward a total of 23 recommendations, eight of which required action by the commission.
According to him, 15 of the recommendations forwarded requires action from the executive, the judiciary, the legislature, as well as other stakeholders, such as civil society organisations, the media, faith-based organisations, and political parties.
“The eight specific recommendations for INEC relate to the dissemination of the commission’s regulations and guidelines for elections, training of election duty staff, and deployment of electoral technology.
“Other areas include the result management process, continuous registration of voters, cleaning up of the voters’ register, participation of marginalised groups in the electoral process, and voting by internally displaced persons, IDPs.
“On our part, the commission undertook an extensive internal and external review of the 2023 general elections, involving the participation of our own officials and stakeholders across the board.
“We produced a 524-page main report and a 74-page review report containing 142 recommendations. The two reports have already been uploaded to our website,” he said.
Meanwhile, he disclosed that the commission had commenced the implementation of those aspects that the recommendations required only administrative action.
“For instance, in some of the off-cycle, re-run, and bye-elections conducted since the general elections, there has been an improvement in the quality of training for ad hoc staff, including the deployment of more BVAS machines for this purpose,” he said.
Yakubu applauded the tremendous improvement recorded as result of functionality of BVAS machines for voter accreditation, using fingerprint or facial authentication.
