Former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, was spot on when he made some suggestions on reforming our electoral process. Jega, who spoke at the recent citizens’ town hall meeting on electoral reforms in Abuja, first advocated a transparent process in the appointment of the commission’s chairman and national commissioners. This was in reference to the current situation whereby the President alone appoints INEC chairman and national commissioners.
The former INEC boss also called for the unbundling of the electoral commission. This, he said, was to take off many responsibilities the umpire was saddled with to enable it to face its core responsibilities. He also suggested further amendment of the Electoral Act to ban carpet-crossing by elected political office-holders.
“People have elected you on a platform and it is really unbecoming for somebody to abandon the mandate that has been given to him or her to now move to another party. And we have seen it, not just in the legislature, now even executive governors are abandoning their mandates midway and moving to another party,” Jega said.
Former INEC boss’ recommendations are worth looking into. We agree to an extent that carpet-crossing has not helped our democracy. The major problem is that most of our politicians have no ideology. They often jump from party A to party B not because they love the ideals of the party they are jumping into but because they feel they will either win elections or get appointments in their new party of choice.
It is understandable if the carpet-crossing is as a result of some crisis in one’s political party. But oftentimes, it is not. Recently, Senator Ifeanyi Ubah, who was elected on the platform of the Young Progressives Party (YPP) carpet-crossed to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). This is without resigning his position as the elected Senator representing Anambra South in the Senate. There was no justifiable reason for this as there was no known crisis in his party.
When elected political office-holders abandon the platform upon which they were elected without any recourse to the people who elected them in the first place, it undermines the confidence people have in democracy and in the electoral system. It smacks of lack of good faith on the part of the politicians. The electorate who voted for the politicians on a particular platform knew why they did so. This is why we agree with Jega that we must adhere to the law which stipulates that if you move to another party when there is no crisis in your party, you have to vacate the seat and a by-election conducted to fill the vacancy.
We copied our brand of democracy from the United States. But hardly will you hear that politicians carpet-cross the way we do here. Ideology is what binds them together. A member of the Republican Party, who fails an election today, may win tomorrow. Those who fail to do the bidding of the electorate are voted out. Former President Donald Trump was voted out in the last presidential election. Joe Biden of the Democratic Party won and is the current President. This has not pushed Trump to carpet-cross to Democratic Party. There is even no guarantee that Biden will win the next election. This is how democracy is sustained.
We believe that INEC as presently constituted is part of the problems. It has lost the confidence of the people because of the way and manner it has conducted elections so far. This has affected the electoral process and outcome. The 2023 elections, like many others before it, recorded a number of infractions. In some places, INEC officials came late to their polling units due to poor transportation arrangement. Some could not even come at all. In some instances, especially in the presidential election, the electronic transmission of election result failed and cast serious doubt about the outcome of the election. We need an honest, dispassionate review of what went wrong in the last election in order to make amends and engender more credible elections in Nigeria.
This is why we agree with Jega that INEC should be relieved of some of its burdens to help improve our electoral process. The commission does a number of things, which are not its core mandate. It should jettison such things and focus on its core mandate, which is conducting elections in Nigeria. For instance, transport and some other logistics that are critical to elections may be outsourced to give INEC the time to concentrate on conducting free and credible elections.
The National Assembly should set aside partisanship and put measures in place to amend electoral laws. Many things need to be put right. Our democracy needs to be fine-tuned. The time to begin the cleansing is now.