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The Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC) has commended the contribution of the immediate past Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reforming the nation’s electoral system through the massive introduction of technology.
Speaking at a colloquium on ten years of leadership of Prof. Mahmood Yakubu as INEC Chairman, National Chairman of IPAC, Alhaji Yusuf Dantalle, said in view of the massive reform by the commission under Prof Yakubu, it was difficult to have multiple voting during the elections.
Dantalle said votes of Nigerians actually counted during the general election despite voter apathy, adding that with the technological innovations introduced by the Yakubu leadership, it became difficult for political party to manipulate the system through the use of fake voters cards while also ensuring that only registered voters participated
“In the past, votes were manufactured results were announced and you have 20 something million, 30 something million. What INEC under Professor Mahmood did was to first clean the voter’s register using technology and now, you cannot have more than one person on the register.
“The name you have here, if you go to Bayelsa, it’s the same person if you go to Akwa Ibom. So with that process, the voter’s list was cleaned up. There were no underage voters that we used to have.
“We have seen fake PVCs that were produced being thrown in the gutter. Those PVCs could not pass the BVAS test of BVAS because they were fake. That was because of the technology introduced under the leadership of Professor Mahmood.
“So, when the election was conducted in 2023, people complained about voter apathy. But the truth is that even though there was voter apathy, votes were no longer being manufactured by politicians. The votes you saw during the election were the actual votes from Nigerians and nobody could vote more than once.
“We saw an election where a sitting governor lost an election to the Senate. It happened in Enugu, it happened in Benue, it happened in Kebbi where sitting governors couldn’t win because votes counted. We saw a Peter Obi who does not have councillors anywhere, no local government chairman defeating the incumbent president in Lagos because votes counted.”
Dantalle said the technologies that were introduced by Prof. Yakubu during his tenure were home grown, built in-house by staff of the Commission.
He said in the past, political parties could manipulate the process of submitting names of their candidates for every election, adding that the Yakubu era at INEC put an end to that as well as the nefarious activities associated with it.
“Before now, you had political parties coming with trucks of sacks of documents from primary elections to coalition centres. At times, you have to pay some officials to ensure that you go in. At times you have to influence officials to change names of people that actually won from the field. But Mahmood stopped it using technology.”
The IPAC chairman said as the chief electoral umpire, Prof Yakubu made political parties to own the system of uploading names of their candidates.
“Initially, the parties were not doing that. INEC also realised that they were still replacing names of prospective candidates who are winners of primary elections.
“What INEC did was to ensure that they have a backup of names of those that actually contested for the primary and all the results that emerged from the primary. If you try to upload names of those that did not win the primary, the system will automatically reject it. What this has done is that it has tremendously reduced pre-election litigations from primary elections.
“There is no innovation that Mahmoud Yakubu introduced into the system without the input and consensus of stakeholders such as political parties and civil society organisations. So, all the innovations and technological input or otherwise that were introduced have the acceptability of the major stakeholders.”
He explained that in the implementation of the technological innovations, political parties were given the liberty to introduce whoever they wanted from their parties to be trained by INEC so that they could be conversant with the use of such technologies
On registration of political parties, he said the process which is ongoing is delayed because of the stringent measures introduced by the commission which has made it practically impossible for one person to register a political party.
