Electoral Reforms: Obasanjo Demands Sack Of INEC Chair – Yakubu, Others

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said for the needed and necessary electoral reforms process to be achieved in Nigeria, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and other top officials of the commission must be relieved of their jobs.

Obasanjo, who stated this at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum at Yale University in the United States, stressed that INEC’s failure to utilise two main technological tools namely; the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and Election Result Viewing Portal (IReV), in the 2023 presidential election, despite promises made by Yakubu is enough reason for the overhaul of the INEC.

This was as the former President described the 2023 general election as a “travesty”, stressing that the reform of the electoral system remains a key agenda for the country.

Obasanjo also canvassed for shorter tenures for INEC officials and a more rigorous vetting process to prevent the appointment of partisan individuals.

In his words: “As a matter of urgency, we must ensure the INEC Chairperson and their staff are thoroughly vetted. The vetting exercise should produce dispassionate, non-partisan actors with impeccable reputations.

“Nigeria must ensure the appointment of new credible INEC leadership at the federal, state, local government, and municipal – city, town, and village – levels, with short tenures to prevent undesirable political influence and corruption, and to re-establish trust in the electoral system by its citizens

“The INEC Chairperson must not only be absolutely above board, but must also be transparently independent and incorruptible.

“The BVAS and IReV are two technological innovations that, before 2023, were celebrated for their potential to enhance the accuracy and transparency of our election results, eliminate the threat of election rigging, and boost public trust in the electoral outcomes.

“These technologies were touted by the INEC chairman himself. In the end, these technologies did not fail. INEC willfully failed to use or implement them, which resulted in widespread voting irregularities. It was a case of inviting the fox into the henhouse,” he said.

Apart from former President Obasanjo, several other individuals, particularly supporters of the Labour Party (LP) in the last general election have criticized INEC over what they described as “the deliberate failure to use the IReV platform during the presidential election, which the electoral body blamed on technical glitch.

Prof. Yakubu was appointed by former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and was reappointed in 2020 for another five-year tenure which is expected to expire in 2025.