The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu has said that the Commission will implement the recommendations of the stakeholders who reviewed the 2023 general elections, in the forthcoming off-cycle elections across the country.
Yakubu said this at the meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) across the 36 states of the federation and the FCT on Friday in Lagos.
Recall that INEC has held meetings with various stakeholders to review the 2023 general elections starting from 4th of July and the meeting ended with engagements with RECs on Friday in Lagos, where recommendations were also made.
Yakubu said, “Immediately after harvesting these recommendations there is an opportunity in the three gubernatorial elections from Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi States elections in Nov. 11, to implement some of the recommendations that require only administrative actions by the commission.
“The ones that require legislation, the National Assembly will have to work on the laws.
“There is also another opportunity for us because so far we have four vacancies declared in the bye-elections.
“These are Surulere I Constituency in Lagos, Jalingo Yaransi Federal Constituency in Taraba State, Chibok State Constituency in Borno State and Chifun State Constituency in Kaduna State.
“Also, there are also four seats declared vacant arising from the screening of the ministerial nominees that is ongoing at the National Assembly.
“Two senators and two members of the House of Representatives have been nominated as ministers.
“So with that, obviously we have eight bye-elections. So these bye-elections will also provide us the opportunity to keep test running some of the suggestions and recommendations made by the stakeholders.
“From the presidential election, the 28 governorship elections, 993 state in the constituencies State Assemblies elections so lessons have already been learnt. But issues have been raised and there would be an improvement from the last election.
Speaking about the programme, he said, “Today, Aug. 4th, we are concluding the meeting with REC and their response has always been overwhelming.
“Remember we started at the state level consultation meeting with the RECs and we had an engagement with the transport unions, electoral officials in Abuja,” he said.
“We also had engagement with the political parties, civil society organisations, media, and security agencies.
“We also had another meeting with the media executives in Lagos and just yesterday, we had a meeting with the administrative secretaries and today we are rounding up with a meeting with the RECs.
“Overall, we are encouraged not only by the response from stakeholders but also the quality of the contributions they have made.
“There are quite a number of issues and challenges right from stakeholders and we are taking this challenge to reduce the obstacle of the elections and bye-elections coming up later in the year.
“There are quite a number of issues which are technology, voters accreditation and reserved management,
“Other issues raised from stakeholders are the issues of electoral logistics so that we open the polling units promptly across the country in all the elections.
“These have been identified as issues we need to address.
“The stakeholders also informed us to improve on the production and collection of permanent voters cards (PVCs).
“These are the issues we need to go back to the drawing board. So we are addressing all the issues based on the recommendations from stakeholders.
“Those issues that require administrative actions by the commission we will deal with them.
“Also those that require amendment of the existing laws, whether it is the Electoral Act 2022 or the Constitution we will harvest them and approach the National Assembly for consideration.
“So we are happy so far with the responses we have received and the most important for the commission is that we have heard from different stakeholders and this will enable us to go back to the drawing board to improve on the electoral process.
“Recall that at the end of the 2019 general election we had a similar engagement with over 170 recommendations and some of those we have seen in the subsequent elections were actually arising from this type of engagement,” Yakubu said.
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