Photo File: Mike-Igini

A former Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Mike Igini, has blamed the Supreme Court of Nigeria for what he described as the confusion surrounding Nigeria’s electoral process.

Igini spoke on Wednesday while fielding questions on The Morning Show, a programme on Arise Television, where he traced the evolution of electoral reforms and the controversies that followed.

He recalled that members of the National Assembly, under Section 52 of the Electoral Act at the time, prohibited the use of electronic voting machines, saying lawmakers were initially wary of introducing electronic components into the process.

According to him, subsequent reforms were aimed at addressing provisions that enabled election rigging, particularly Section 49 of the law, which he said allowed presiding officers significant discretion in accrediting voters.

Igini noted that the Supreme Court ruled that the smart card reader could not override manual accreditation since it was not expressly provided for in the Electoral Act at the time.

He criticised the apex court’s position on INEC’s Result Viewing Portal, iReV, stating that despite INEC guidelines mandating the upload of polling unit results to the portal to ensure transparency, the court held that the iReV had no legal effect beyond being a viewing platform.

He argued that previous judicial authorities had recognised three principal legal frameworks governing elections, the Constitution, the Electoral Act, and regulations and guidelines issued by INEC pursuant to constitutional powers.

According to him, recent Supreme Court decisions have thrown the electoral system into disarray and contributed to the ongoing debates over the credibility and legal standing of technological innovations in Nigeria’s elections.

He said: “The members of the National Assembly, under Section 52, were scared and they prohibited the use of any electronics”. In fact, they used the word no electronic voting machine. That was the language that was used.

“But we came in, we saw section 49, section 52, and section 68, and declared them election rigging provisions. And for 20 years, we fought to get those provisions removed.

“Now, having done that, by the time the Attahiru Jega came in, we started with what he called biometric, which was the first time that it was carried out.

“Then you remember what we call TVC, temporary voters card. From TVC, we moved to Permanent Voter Card, PVC. From PVC, we moved to the smart card reader to deal with section 49, which is the election rigging provision in our laws.

“But what happened? By 2015, of course, sabotage from within and from outside was a major problem. In 2015, by the time we bought the card reader, the card reader was not a voting machine. It was meant to deal with section 49 that says that a presiding officer, once you are a voter who’s registered in a polling unit, once you come, if the presiding officer is satisfied, the voter should be given what it called a ballot to vote.

“That was where politicians started buying voters cards, rehearsing everything, rigging elections. We needed to sanitize it. That was why we brought the idea of the smart card reader to identify, confirm and authenticate a true voter.

“But painfully the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court, declared that the smart card reader, although a beautiful device, it, however, should have been written in the Electoral Act.

“today, the debate that has held this country down for the past two months is brought about by the Supreme Court and I will give you what the Supreme Court did, how it has thrown everything in disarray.

“Supreme Court, tribunals, declared that the regulation and guidelines of INEC that stated clearly on the basis of our historical experience, that where the results that have been declared at the polling unit, that expected or mandate to be sent to the iReV, so that when the results were there on the iReV nobody will change it, Supreme Court said that iReV is an amusement center, is a viewing center, is of no effect and all that.

“The question now is, what happened to the lineup of authorities, 1979, 1983 and all subsequent judgment of the Supreme Court of the 2015, when the Court declared that in any elections, there are three principal legal framework that govern the election, which are the Constitution, the Electoral Act, and indeed regulations and guideline as given both in the Constitution under Section 160 as well as section 148 for the conduct of the election.”